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Opera Mini 5 mobile web browser
THE GOOD THING about reviewing a mobile browser is that, wherever you are, you are working. So when Opera released the latest version of its Mini mobile browser this week, I leapt at it and quickly downloaded the tiny 500KB application for my BlackBerry Bold.
Opera Mini 5 promises much - a new design, improved use of tabbed browsing and a more intuitive look and feel. To a BlackBerry user all these features sound good, but how do they perform?
Once I had accepted the EULA I was presented with a much smaller version of Opera 10 - a browser that I occasionally use, and I was pleased to see some recognisable button options.
The interface is nice. It's clean and clear and offers a selection of easy-to-use buttons. The address bar is easily switched to a Google search box, and while scrolling on the Blackberry browser was more of a stroll, this moves at Usain Bolt speeds. Tabs, which I assumed would be too small to register on a mobile browser, are actually very clear, which was a great relief. New tabs - I chose the Inquirer and a couple of sports and entertainment sites - can be assigned with just a few clicks.
The BBC news site already bookmarked in my download was one of my first destinations and although its font was too small to read the browser offered a very nice zoom function. This is a hovering box that glides around with thumbwheel control, or touch on another handset, and it lets you select and view areas of the page in a lot more detail. You can easily change the font size and other features by selecting the drop down menu and selecting 'settings'.
Keypad browsing and the use of the browser's speed dial was handy, but hardly intuitive. In fact I only stumbled on it while randomly button pressing as I looked for a way out of the browser itself. My heavy-handedness on the Bold's thumbwheel also revealed the ability to copy areas of text for pasting elsewhere, but to be honest I think I would have struggled to find this feature had I not stumbled upon it by accident. However, after a short period of fiddling about and browsing the Opera Mini 5 controls soon became easier to use and I was flitting between sites with the speed of an attention deficit sufferer.
The Opera Mini 5 password manager, an improved feature, saves passwords to your phone, which is handy when it comes to accessing your favourite sites, and a massive boon for anyone who steals your phone and decides to wreak havoc on your Facebook page. More security aware users might choose just to try and remember their passwords, especially as Opera offers both touchscreen and keyboard typing.
The Opera Mini 5 mobile web browser beta release is free and will run on almost any handset you throw it at. I would suggest that you give it a go. µ
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Very nice browser
pls send me opera 5
very good software
I have refused the allure of the smart phone, sticking by my Nokia 3500 classic like a disgraced US Senator.
Mini 5 Beta actually runs quite well. The only problem I have found is the main menu isn't small screen friendly. I have a SMALL screen and only the big "favourites" item shows up, but I can still click down to other options like settings and help.
Otherwise is right snappy over GPRS and EDGE. Don't need 3G one bit!
Saying Opera 5 "will run on almost any handset you throw it at" is a bit of a stretch, I think. I installed it on my 8130, and its age is really starting to show... It's so slow to the point that the program seems unresponsive and a pain to use.
Pressing the back button no longer exits the program. You have to click menu, which brings down the menu, scroll all the way to the right, then click Yes after it asks if you are sure. With the lag on my phone, this actually takes about 5 whole seconds when it should take no more than an instant like in Opera Mini 4.2.
Doesn't the password manager have the option of setting a master password, like the desktop versions?
This means you set one password for Opera and use that for all your logins, or have it set to ask for the master password once per session.
Adding a master password also adds stronger encryption to your passwords, making it even safer from thieves.
I've been playing with mini 5 since yesterday morning on my N97, and it shows a lot of promise. It has a few quirks, for example it insists on displaying the virtual touch keyboard when I'm in landscape mode (where I have a real keyboard I can use), and as I just literally just discovered, there is no way to insert new lines into text boxes (sorry!) or scroll a large text box down to see what you are typing when it goes behind the virtual keyboard! Its link handling in twitter is also confused, just try to view your followers! I hope scroll bars return, a long page takes a lot of screen swipes to get to the bottom!